Since the recording of this interview, Dorchester’s Carney Hospital has taken even further action to aid in its transformation into a coronavirus dedicated care center. Steward Healthcare, the Carney’s parent company, has moved to close non-coronavirus related units within the building to make more room to care for patients of COVID-19. The detox unit, run by Bay Cove Human Services, that Laurie Chaskes worked in was among those units shut down; employees were informed at 11:30 AM on April 1 that they had to pack up the unit by the end of the day so the hospital could begin the process of changing it into a COVID-19 dedicated unit. Patients will be transferred to an alternate unit in Brighton, also owned by the same company that sponsored this one, Commonwealth Care Alliance, but the Dorchester unit employees are currently out of a job. Other areas that were shut down within the Carney include the surgical unit, which is currently being made over to hold coronavirus patients. As the United States’ confirmed case count continues to rise, currently almost at 600,000 confirmed cases, it appears management at Steward wants the Carney to utilize every possible space for housing those affected by the pandemic. The mayor of Boston, Marty Walsh, recently announced a new curfew, as citizens are no longer allowed to be out between the hours of 9 PM and 6 AM without an essential reason, and the mayor has also said that Boston’s response to the coronavirus will almost definitely be continuing into July and August.

This graph shows both the daily increase and total count of confirmed coronavirus cases in the state of Massachusetts. It’s not current, only going up to April 5, but one can get a sense of the scale of the growth, and the current figure is around 28,000.

When considering what to take pictures of for my social media photography assignment, I thought about what I value at Northeastern and in Boston history. I’m very interested in sports journalism and sports in general, and that definitely had an influence on the subjects I chose and the photos I took. I’m very interested in soccer and play it casually whenever I can, so the Carter Field bubble was very interesting to me, in addition to being a very photogenic subject. The buildings in the background, although they didn’t make the picture because of the angle I chose, paint a beautiful city backdrop behind the giant white structure covering the field. However, I went to the field at sunset and the rosy glow of the sky behind the bubble was too beautiful not to make the picture, and I added the soccer ball in the foreground for a nice touch. The picture of the inside was just taken through the window of the door in a hurry, but I felt another image of the outside would look too similar to the first.

For the Boston history pictures, I decided to target a nearby attraction, and one of my personal favorite places in Boston, Fenway Park. I had planned on taking pictures of the pennants that usually adorn the outside wall but they were not up. They would have created a nice diagonal line into the center of the image, but I found this instead with the line of retired numbers on the outside of the park. For my second image, I looked to a group of statues erected outside one of the gates to commemorate Red Sox greats from over the years. Eventually settling on a heartwarming statue of the legendary Ted Williams placing his hat on a young fan’s head, I took a picture from almost the perspective of the child

Finally, I had to take pictures of anything I thought was newsworthy, and I chose the Christian Science Plaza, not because I thought it was particularly newsworthy, but because I had already taken a really nice picture of one of the light fixtures there a few nights before and I wanted to be able to use that one for the assignment. It was a shot from the ground up, and there were a lot of converging diagonal lines as well as some symmetry so I liked the way it came out. For the others I just tried to find good angles to take pictures of the building itself, and the shots came out decent, if not as great as the one of the lights.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.